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Juniors Sam Gerk and Oliva Hails won the election for Undergraduate Student Government president and vice president by default last Thursday, when junior Milan Chatterjee, presidential candidate, announced he had withdrawn from the running.
Chatterjee cited health reasons as the cause of his decision to withdrawal; however, according to campaign receipts, Chatterjee went over the allotted campaign budget of $300, said Carl Johnson, director of Student Life.
“I have had chronic health issues for the past 10 years. It has been aggravated for the past three weeks and served as the basis for me withdrawing from this election,” said Chatterjee in a statement. “I will be having major surgery, which will not allow me to be recovered in time for the position.”
Approximately 1,100 students voted in the election. However, the voting process itself has been anything but typical.
Votes cast on the first day of the election, on Monday, May 3, were declared null and void after a glitch in the voting process. Only votes cast from Tuesday, May 4, to Thursday, May 6, counted. Even then, however, a final vote count was not tabulated, since Chatterjee announced his withdrawal.
Upon his withdrawal, Chatterjee accused the Senate Affairs Committee (SAC) of showing bias toward his opponents, Gerk and Hails.
According to Nikki Deutsch, the chair of the SAC, there was no bias displayed throughout the campaign process.
“All [the members of SAC] bring different views to the table when handling difficult situations like the one we had to deal with this past week,” said Deutsch. “We chose a position of neutrality and no single person on my committee publicly endorsed a candidate. We remained neutral throughout the entire process.”
The SAC is composed of seven members, three of whom are current members of USG, while four are not involved in USG besides their role in SAC.
All of the candidates were debriefed on the election by-laws, which said that candidates needed to keep all their receipts to be turned in to SAC and examined by the Student Comptroller.
Before any other candidates’ campaign budgets were examined, the presidential and vice presidential candidates’ records were requested by Deutsch.
“I requested the receipts from the presidential and vice presidential candidates first because their budgets were the largest and most complex,” said Deutsch. “I requested they fill out a template excel sheet as well as send electronic copies of their receipts.”
Chatterjee said in a statement that the confusion surrounding his receipts was based strictly on the committee’s lack of warning, which caused him to forward his receipts in without checking them.
“The SAC requested electronic copies of my receipts and sent me a final deadline, four hours before they were due. I contacted the merchants during a two-hour time frame (since I had a doctors appointment),” said Chatterjee. “[They] then found problems with the receipts, and what had happened was that the merchants made mistakes with a couple receipts, and they accidentally sent me quotes instead of receipts.”
According to Chatterjee, he contacted SAC the next morning to clarify what had happened, but was turned down.
“I tried to provide the final receipts,” said Chatterjee. “Nonetheless, they were uninterested in meeting with me and moving forward.”
Gerk and Hails had no comment regarding the over-budgeting of Chatterjee’s campaign; however, they did address Chatterjee’s accusatory claims following the election that the duo had resorted to “dirty politics” by throwing a “large scale” party, where they campaigned heavily.
“I hate that Milan has taken this approach [and] it’s upsetting to see that he is questioning our integrity,” said Hails. “I can’t think of any kind of party except for a beer pong tournament my roommates and I hosted about three weeks before elections. It had nothing to do with campaigning [though]. At the time Sam and I were no where near prepared to come out with the news that we were running together.”
In addition to the party, Chatterjee said that Gerk and Hails started campaigning a week before they were legally allowed to at club sports meeting, which was brought to the SAC’s attention, but didn’t result in any penalties against the candidates.
“Neither of the two accusatory claims mentioned were raised as concerns during the election to the SAC,” said Gerk. “We did our best in running an honest and fair campaign. We are disappointed with the way Milan chose to go on with this, and raise these issues.” Hails said that the announcement at the club sports meeting was addressed and dealt with “immediately.”
While Gerk and Hails prepare to serve as the next USG president and vice president during the 2011-2012 school year, Chatterjee has returned home to Henderson, Nev. to address his health.
Gerk and Hails say their election was clean and fair.
“We headed a clean and healthy campaign that we worked really hard and will stand behind,” said Hails.
Chatterjee says the election was dirty and biased.
“I got tired from the dirty politics of this campaign and my health could no longer handle it,” said Chatterjee. “I’m not so desperate for the position that I would further ruin my health by moving this fight forward. Since they wanted this position so bad that they resorted to dirty politics, I decided to let them have it and not even appeal.”
